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Best Easter Eggs and Other Software Surprises

the_insult_dog writes "Computerworld has an article up (with videos) about some of the coolest Easter eggs and other software surprises, ranging from full-featured games to strange messages from robots. What other eggs are out there? What's the coolest egg ever?"

9 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. this is a spam submission by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    uggh what a horrible spam submission is this a domain squatters site ?
    loads of adverts and 1 eegg on each single page, desperate for revenue much? ill be glad when adblock finishes these domains off for good, no value at all.

    anyway http://eeggs.com/ is the source where they have cut and pasted their content from

  2. mIRC & Photoshop by sexconker · · Score: 4, Informative

    On the about / register splash screen type:
    a r n i e

    The picture of the creator turns into a picture of a stuffed dinosaur, presumably names Arnie.

    Various Photoshop splash logos in the past have had hidden images.

    Typically you would have to grab a screenshot of the splash logo and then do CMYK separation, fiddle with brightness/contrast, grid masking, etc. to see the images.

  3. telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl by janeuner · · Score: 4, Informative

    ^^ Incredible.

    Netherlanders == Nerds

  4. Zombies... by atari2600 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is somewhere between an easter egg and a surprise. Beating the Call of Duty: World at War single player mode and being patient enough for the credits to end unlocks a mini-game: Zombie Survival that you can play solo or co-op with upto 3 other players.

    Lot of fun, adds to the game value (and kinda apologizes for the quality of multiplayer offering).

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJwYmxaZ-9I - Found on youtube.

    Found out the game mode purely by accident after I beat the single player mode and went to make a sandwich...A lot of gamers knew it and it was all over the web but I was oblivious to that part which made it a nice surprise.

  5. Re:Videos? by RebootKid · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. Go to the spreadsheet application in the OpenOffice suite
    2. Go to any cell
    3. Type in: =game()
    The response will be "say what?"
    4. Type in: =GAME("StarWars")
    5. Press the enter key -- the opening screen shows up
    6. Pick your icon -- a message will appear in German
    7. Pick your level (again, in German)
    8. Click 'start'

  6. 11 pages and over 80 adverts later by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    fuck computerworld, 80 adverts for a single pages worth of crappy eggs ?
    enjoy unemployment fuckers

    Star Wars game

          1. Go to the spreadsheet application in the OpenOffice suite
          2. Go to any cell
          3. Type in: =game()
                The response will be "say what?"
          4. Type in: =GAME("StarWars")
          5. Press the enter key -- the opening screen shows up
          6. Pick your icon -- a message will appear in German
          7. Pick your level (again, in German)
          8. Click 'start'

    Wanda the fish

          1. In Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 in this case), press Alt-F2
          2. In the box, type: free the fish

    Gegls from outer space

          1. In Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 in this case), press Alt-F2
          2. In the box, type: gegls from outer space

    No Easter eggs here

          1. On Debian-based Linux distros, go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal
          2. Type in: aptitude moo
          3. After the response, type: Aptitude -v moo
          4. After the response, type: Aptitude -v -v moo
          5. (At this point, after the computer program argues with you, you're just adding one more -v each time.) Remember that five is your lucky number!

    Robots

          1. In Firefox 3, go to the Location bar
          2. Type in: about:robots

    Star Wars movie

    Not technically an Easter egg, but still cool

          1. In Windows XP (or any OS that supports Telnet), click Start, then Run
          2. Type in: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

    Terminal Tetris

    This actually is a function of the emacs text editor. Type "doctor" at the prompt and you'll get a free session with a psychotherapist.

          1. On the Mac, go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal
          2. Type: emacs
          3. Press Escape & X at the same time
          4. After your cursor moves to the bottom, type Tetris

    Book of Mozilla

          1. In Firefox location box, type: about:mozilla

    Crazy Dates

    Again, perhaps not really an Easter egg (though a lot of people on the Web think it is)

          1. In Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 here), go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal
          2. Type in the 'ddate' command followed by a date in the format of number, space, number, space, four-digit year number (for instance: 4 6 2009)
          3. Each time you type in a different date, you get another bizarre response from the 'Discordian' calendar

    Pipes screensaver

          1. In the Google Chrome Web browser's location bar, type in: about:internets

    Have you mooed today?

          1. In Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 here), go to Applications > Accesories > Terminal
          2. Type in the apt-get package manager command and a bovine parameter: apt-get moo

  7. *sigh* by Oxy+the+moron · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the "up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-a-b-select-start" department?

    Surely you meant "b-a." I'm pretty sure a-b didn't do anything. :)

    --

    Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.

  8. Mac OS Pre-9 by jnetsurfer · · Score: 4, Informative

    In Mac OS 7.5 - 8.5, you could get easter eggs by typing the text "secret about box" into any text editor that supported drag & drop and text clippings, selecting the text and dragging it to the desktop. In one OS, it would start a "brick-out" type game with the developer's names.

  9. HP Oscilloscope Tetris by JPEWdev · · Score: 4, Informative

    The HP Oscilloscopes used in my EE Circuits lab had a hidden Tetris game. It was a great way to have the Lab TA give you a funny look.

    http://www.eeggs.com/items/28801.html